All Out Writer Simon Rich on Bringing Classic Sketch Comedy Back to Broadway

Comedy tends to skew high or low, but Simon Rich has successfully found a happy medium. Critics compare his quirky stories to the works of James Thurber and P.G. Wodehouse, while John Mulaney calls him “the Stephen King of comedy writing, the funniest man I have ever met.” A year ago, Tony-winning director Alex Timbers brought seven of Rich’s pieces about love to Broadway in All In: Comedy About Love, read by a rotating cast of comic performers. This starry event became a sold-out hit, and now Rich and Timbers have reteamed for All Out: Comedy About Ambition, a collection centering on every New Yorker’s not-so-secret obsession. Again, a cast of four will cycle in and out for a week of performances through March 8, 2026, joined onstage by Lawrence, the lively soul-pop band fronted by 2025 Tony nominee Gracie Lawrence and her brother Clyde.

Rich began his career almost 20 years ago as one of the youngest-ever staff writers at Saturday Night Live. Along the way, he published two novels and seven story collections, penned screenplays and created the streaming series Man Seeking Woman. Broadway fans of a certain age will recall that his father, Frank Rich, was the last of the all-powerful theater critics at The New York Times. During previews of All Out, featuring a cast of Broadway newcomers (Ike Barinholtz, Eric Andre, Abbi Jacobson and Jon Stewart), Rich explained how his show carries forward the tradition of classic sketch comedy performed for a live audience.

All Out mixes comedy and music in a way we don’t often see on Broadway. What’s it like to watch your words brought to life on stage?
It’s absolutely thrilling. My favorite part of SNL [Saturday Night Live] was being able to see the skill and versatility of the comedians—just watching actors inhabit so many different roles over a span of 90 minutes. This show is an attempt to replicate that dynamic on Broadway.

Alex Timbers has done a great job weaving in songs by Lawrence [featuring Timbers’ Just in Time original star Gracie Lawrence].
I was introduced to Lawrence through their album Family Business, which is powerful and catchy and fun, and absolutely in line with our theme of success and failure and desperately trying to make it in the big city. The characters in these stories are frantically trying to climb that ladder to glory, and [Lawrence’s] songs are all about that struggle. Their original music is front and center, but they’re also scoring every story and providing live sound effects. They’ve been wonderful collaborators.

After the success of All In, people must have been lining up to do All Out. How did you assemble this mix of performers?
It’s a combination of people I’ve worked with, like Ike Barinholtz and Eric Andre and Jenny Slate, and others I’m just an enormous fan of, like Abbi Jacobson and Wayne Brady.

It’s wild to see Jon Stewart play Neil Armstrong, followed by Eric Andre as Paul Revere’s horse.
The show changes drastically from week to week because everyone has a uniquely hilarious take on these roles and relationships. What’s interesting about theater is how much of it lives in the dynamic between performers. It’s amazing to watch that alchemy of what people bring to the table.

The performers have scripts in hand, but everyone in the original cast was pretty much off-book by the third performance.
This is a similar conceit to SNL, which is on cue cards because people only have a week to prepare. People are parachuting in from whatever film set or comedy tour they’ve been on, and they’re still able to absolutely nail it without a ton of rehearsal. The most thrilling thing for me is showcasing people’s virtuosity and seeing how committed these comedians are.

What types of stories work best in performance?
I learned off the bat at SNL that the stuff that works best with actors is very presentational, very accessible and authentic. There are a number of monologues in the show, and that’s from my SNL training. When you think about the most popular recurring sketch characters, they tend to be talk show hosts, game show hosts—characters that connect directly to the audience, which is a trick I try to employ in this medium.

It must be satisfying to have given Broadway debuts to people like Jimmy Fallon and the four original cast members in All Out.
Oh, we’re all ecstatic to have this opportunity, and we don’t take it for granted. I grew up worshipping shows like Nichols and May and Beyond the Fringe—which, of course, I never got to see because it was before I was born—but listening to those albums inspired me to want to do something in that genre one day, a comedy/variety show on Broadway.

Tell us more about how you realized you wanted to pursue humor writing.
I think it just came from what I was a fan of from an early age. I was exposed to a lot of theater, obviously, and I still love classic playwrights like Neil Simon and Noël Coward, but my favorite stuff was always premise-driven sketch shows—both the Broadway versions I mentioned and comedy/variety on television, from Your Show of Shows to The Carol Burnett Show to SNL. The DNA of [All Out] goes all the way back to something close to vaudeville. New York has this awesome longstanding sketch variety tradition, and it’s exciting to do something that feels [like] what the Sid Caesars of the world were doing 75 years ago.

How did you learn so much about old-school variety shows?
The Museum of Television and Radio—I would go there all the time and watch Sid Caesar; I’d watch Laugh-In; I’d watch the Smothers Brothers. All those shows were a great influence on me. Woody Allen was a huge influence; also The Simpsons. But if I’m being honest, I would say my biggest influence was Mel Brooks, just the way he made use of some of these classic tropes. Ike Barinholtz just worked on History of the World Part II, which I thought was hugely funny, and they’re doing a new Spaceballs. I read the script, and it’s excellent. Mel Brooks is still front and center in the minds of comedy writers.

All Out centers on ambition. Are you as ambitious now as when you were a very young staff writer at SNL?
Definitely not, and that’s what the show is all about. Many of the characters are young, insecure and desperate to prove themselves, and by the end, they are a little older and a little less obsessed with glitz and glory. It’s about that progression so many of us go on.

How have your ambitions changed over time?
I think it’s really that one’s priorities change. There’s the story in the show of Clobbo, the [superhero] monkey man, who, when we meet him, is obsessed with killing aliens and achieving glory and winning keys to the city from the mayor. By the end of the story, he’s lost that identity but discovered a new one connected to his family. That’s a journey I identify with, and that hopefully will be relatable to people my age. What I hope the show demonstrates is that regardless of your success, everyone is coping with the same desperate, frantic insecurity.

As a kid, were you aware of the incredible influence your dad, Frank Rich, had as the New York Times theater critic?
Yes, I was aware, but I always wanted to write the shows and not review them. [laughs]

Did you enjoy going to the theater with him? Any special memories of shows you loved?
It was hugely influential on me. Two shows that stand out were the great Bill Irwin clown show Fool Moon, which blew me away, and the Penn & Teller show. Even then, I was attracted to shows that were closer to sketch comedy revues as opposed to more traditional naturalism.

So, you have no desire to write a traditional play?
I really love this premise-driven sketch comedy genre. There’s something very freeing about not being limited to a single set or a single location or a single set of characters, I like how elastic it is. I’ve read every Neil Simon play, and I have huge respect for that type of show, but personally, I love writing about an astronaut on one page, a talking horse on the next and a naked emperor on the next—and I never have to justify it.

Get tickets to All Out: Comedy About Ambition!